Ad Personam: Dan Antonescu, Limitless Horizons Entertainment
Sia 'Garrett' Manzari, 2004-04-28

Ad Personam is dedicated to the people behind the games: programmers, artists, musicians, directors, producers and many other professions involved in creating the stuff that fills our harddisks, lets us sleep less and eat more junk food. In each Ad Personam, we want to introduce one of these fine folks to you - and this time it is Dan Antonescu, Lead Designer of Realms of Torment.

Dan Antonescu: I'm Dan Antonescu, a 28 years old romanian and lead game designer of Maxim Software's/Quad Software's Realms of Torment MMORPG project. If you're asking me about my game industry career, then I can tell you I never worked in game industry until I started to work on this project in the spring of 2002. But if you're asking me about my career in general, I can tell you I did a lot of things: real estate agent, DTP and design in movie advertising industry, network administrator in an university, IT officer in an AIDS charity foundation (in which I also did many other things), now I am lead game designer of a MMORPG and God knows what I'll do in the future (but I'm sure it won't be politics even if I was told I would make an awesome one, I hate politics :PPP )!

Dan Antonescu: No, please don't ask me about a favorite game because I have many favorites, and trying to pick the one from them it would kill me. I played (or tried) most of the games since Spectrum times. So, some of my favorite games (not in any special order) would be: Gothic series, Great Battles Collector Edition, Blood Omen/Legacy of Kain series, UFO/X-Com series, Panzer Elite, Ultima series, Combat Mission series, Summoner, NHL series, Combat Flight Simulator 2, Medal of Honor, Il2 Sturmovik: Forgotten battles, Thief, Starcraft, Half Life and many others. The board games list is a little bit shorter: go and chess.

Dan Antonescu: Lucia y el sexo is the latest good one I saw. Again for actors and actresses you'll get with a list from me: Al Pacino, Mel Gibson, Glen Close, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Douglas, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Cage and a lot of romanian ones you never heard about!

Dan Antonescu: Metallica with their Black Album (but I hate their last record). Led Zeppelin, Chopin, George Michael, Joe Satriani, Elend, Santana, Madona, Schuman, Parazitii ( :D ), INXS, The Doors, Phil Colins, Helloween, Depeche Mode, George Enescu, Michael Jackson, Yngwie Malmsteen and so on.

Dan Antonescu: I wouldn't do the one I am doing right now if I wouldn't love it! In fact all my life I did only what I wanted to do (lol, well… at least with a few exceptions :PPP). After this on, don't know. Maybe I'll see I am a bad game maker and I'll start sell antiquities :D

Dan Antonescu: That's a hard question, as I don't know any of them personally. But I would prefer the bright and open minded ones and I really love the team we gather in here (both developers and volunteer fans) to work on our current project :D

Dan Antonescu: Even if Blood Omen/Legacy of Kain series aren't RPG's I found many parts from myself in their heroes: Kain and Raziel. As in real life: if you'll flip a coin most of the times it will land on one of it's faces, but sometimes it will land on it's edge, and then what?

Dan Antonescu: Meeting interesting people, swimming, thinking ;), reading, walking alone in parks at night, ancient and WW2 history, astronomy, listening music, watching movies, animals are only a few. I would also love to fly, practicing alpinism, going to stars, play hockey and play God, but you know… never really got the chance :(

Dan Antonescu: Homer and Iliada. And Stanislaw Lem, Pascal Bruckner, Stephen King, J.L. Borgues, Serge Brussolo, Nichita Stanescu, Herbert Frank, Phillip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, Frederic Brown, Philip J. Farmer, Edgar A. Poe are only a few from the ones I love to read. Ah, and Tolkien of course!
I know you'll hate me for these long lists, but I would really felt bad if I wouldn't say anything about the many others I love (as I did anyway otherwise you'll had to read this in a few hours rather than in a few minutes)!

Dan Antonescu: I would rather prefer to live and take part in some interesting times and events like the Trojan War, the times of Alexander the Great and World War Two. Who knows, maybe in another life? :D